LAST night, I dreamt of Hogwarts again. Indeed, the time is ripe to revisit Harry Potter and Hogwarts — the boarding school where the series is based — for here in Pakistan, we are living in the most ‘confunding’ times possible. Surely, the ‘Confundus Charm’ has been used on everyone. And the result is greater confusion than ever before.

Let us begin at the beginning. Of late, the soothsayers among our midst, like Prof Trelawny, have rarely got a prophecy right. For days, they told us ominously that decisions had been made. First came the warning about the departure of Sohail Afridi. Within days, we were forewarned. And then the tea leaves predicted an emergency in KP. Apparently, it was the only province with a dysfunctional government — the rest are all on their way to winning the Triwizard Cup.

But these leaf readers do not face consequences. Indeed, they were hardly employed for their competence. For a number of them, the job has not been to report, analyse, or communicate. Instead, comfortably employed, they do what a ‘howler’ does in the Harry Potter series — pass messages to those who have fallen into disfavour, before ‘self-destructing’ once the job is done. Dignity and credibility appear to have little to do with messaging — neither for these ‘journalists’ nor the politicos who tweet similar warnings.

Be that as it may, the problem lies less with the messengers and more with the higher-ups........

© Dawn